Sussman, who said she never had extra money growing up, was hooked. After a year at Eleanor McMain Secondary School in New Orleans and some time homeschooling, Sussman did her senior year at the Rooted School, through which she was hired at Ochsner Health System's internal services team. The steady paycheck has given her a measure of financial freedom: Now 19, she said she has begun to save for the future, possibly for college without incurring debt, or for a house.
"We're so tired of living just for another check, and I don't have to do that," Sussman said.
A VARIETY OF PATHWAYS
Rooted School is an open enrollment charter high school that aims to prepare its students for financial freedom through a variety of pathways. After graduation, Sussman embarked on a year-long fellowship at Ochsner, mostly working remotely in its information services department, doing customer service work and troubleshooting tech issues.
She was a member of Rooted's first graduating class. Students there take typical high school classes — mathematics, history, English and the like — but also spend two hours a day learning technological skills ranging from coding to graphic design. The school hopes its 180 students graduate with five to 10 certifications, making them attractive hires right out of high school.
"We want kids to cross the graduation stage with a job offer in one hand and a college acceptance letter in the other," said Kaitlin Karpinski, the head of school.
On a recent weekday morning, Karpinski walked down the brightly lit hall of Rooted classrooms that fill a wing on the campus of Southern University at New Orleans. She greeted students by name. In a digital media class, students' heads were buried in their computers as they worked on design projects. In another classroom, Shamille Person used the Adobe Illustrator tool to design an advertisement for her jewelry business.
Of Rooted School's first graduating class of 38 students, in 2021, most who wanted to go to college went with ample scholarships to schools such as Tulane, Villanova and Case Western Reserve, said Johnson, the school's founder and CEO. Those who wanted to enter the workforce got jobs as well, with a $32,000 minimum base pay.
Seven graduates participated in the school's Green Balloon Fellowship — Sussman at Ochsner, others at Entergy, Lucid, Square Button, Revelry and Align. Fellows are supported with coursework before they begin their jobs and mentorship from Rooted staff.
Industry partners have told Rooted leaders that with the rapid pace of technological change, they want to see students certified with as many programs as possible, Karpinski said.
THE ROOTS
A former Teach for America corps member who came to New Orleans in 2010, Johnson founded Rooted School in 2017. He said he began to think more about education and wealth during his second year teaching, when one of his students who sold drugs out of financial necessity was shot to death. That student would have gone to college had his life not been cut short, Johnson said.
Johnson likened New Orleans to a "tale of two cities," with a $40,000 annual household income gap between Black and White residents. A 2016 Institute for Policy Studies report found it would take 228 years for the average wealth of Black families to catch up to the average wealth of White families nationally after years of racist policies. It's a statistic that's often repeated at Rooted.
With the burgeoning tech sector in New Orleans, Johnson hoped to bridge the gap to high-paying jobs that don't necessarily require an expensive college degree.
So Johnson and his team dreamed up the Rooted School, as a shift from the "college or bust mentality, where the only path to financial freedom was to get the four-year degree," he said. For many students, even those who do qualify for college, making $35,000 at age 18 would set them up for a lifetime of economic success and upward mobility without college debt, Johnson said. And if graduates earn that salary at 18, he said, they could make substantially more by 35. That could be put toward sending their own children to college or building up generational wealth.
PATH FOR THE FUTURE
As her fellowship year comes to an end, Sussman hopes to continue working at Ochsner or another comparable job, keep saving money and get a college degree. She has her sight set on climbing the career ladder, maybe as a software engineer, secure in her financial future.
"I didn't even know what freedom was until I started working at Ochsner," she said.
To Johnson, helping students in this way could be the key to preventing violence like what happened to his student who was killed. He hopes to expand the Green Balloon Fellowship to more students and partner companies.
"Models show we can lift people out of poverty, and faster ... . You accelerate the timeline that a person is able to be upwardly mobile," Johnson said.
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